The worksheets provide activities
for four of the articles and interviews published in SPEAK UP every
month. Though mainly designed for teachers using the articles in the classroom,
they can also be used with individual students. Most of the activities in the
worksheets are also suitable for autonomous learners or anyone wishing to
improve their reading and listening skills in English. The activities, like the
articles they relate to, are graded in accordance with the CEF system developed
by the Council of Europe, and range from Pre-intermediate Level (CEF A2) to
Advanced Level (CEF C1).

Each worksheet contains the
following:

- a warm-up activity (Before
you start) toget students thinking and talking about the topic.
This will stimulate interest in it, familiarise them with some of the
vocabulary contained in the article or interview, and make the reading and/or
listening task easier.

- reading and listeningtasks
(Listen and answer/Read and answer)based on the articles
and interviews. These are designed to develop various reading and listening
sub-skills, like reading/listening for main ideas, reading/listening for
specific information, reading/listening for precise details, and so on. As they
are authentic, the recorded interviews may sometimes be graded at a higher
level than the articles that accompany them. When this happens, the listening
activity in the worksheet will require students to do a fairly simple task,
like identifying the main points in the interview.

- a vocabulary exercise (Learn it! Use it!)focusing on the lexis appearing in the glossary, or other significant vocabulary contained in the article. The purpose of this is to activate the vocabulary by requiring students to use it in a different context.

- an exam-type activity (Ready for... ?), based on the format of various parts of the University of Cambridge ESOL exams (KET, PET, FCE and CAE), to provide practice and accustom students to the types of tasks contained in these examinations.

- post-reading activities (Talk about it/Write about it), a ‘personalization’ stage in which students are invited to express their ideas and opinions and talk about their own experiences in relation to the topic. These activities encourage learners to activate the forms and vocabulary encountered in the article or interview.